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Editorial: ‘Mine safety alarm is ringing’

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Wednesday, 27 June 2018 14:22

In Wednesday’s editorial, Business Day writes that 21 workers have already died at Sibanye-Stillwater’s mines only 178 days into the year, which is a staggering number.

The paper says that it’s hard to imagine many jurisdictions that would tolerate having in its midst a company in which an employee was killed at his or her place of work virtually every week and neither should we. That one company accounts for almost half the fatalities in 2018 so far is rightly ringing alarm bells, with the chairman of Parliament’s mineral resources portfolio committee calling for Sibanye to be placed under curatorship. Who, it is asked, can argue against the view that the deaths have now reached 'disastrous proportions'.

In a statement on its website, Sibanye described the latest incident at its Khomanani mine as "perplexing", but shareholders noticed and pushed the company’s shares down about 11% on Tuesday. Clearly, management’s actions so far, including the appointment of a new safety boss, have been far from adequate. It will need to do something quickly, otherwise the political pressure for something far more drastic will be impossible to resist, and its stockholders are already getting the message.